The Ahnenerbe

Nazi expeditions hunting Tibet, Antarctica, and relics of a master-race mythology.

Himmler's 'ancestral heritage' institute (1935) was real, funded, and deranged: expeditions to Tibet (1938-39, measuring skulls and seeking Atlantean remnants), Sweden's runes, Iceland's sagas, the Grail at Montségur (Otto Rahn, who died strangely after resigning), and archaeology conscripted as race mythology. Its Tibet films and internal papers survive; its medical crimes were prosecuted at Nuremberg. It anchors the Nazi-occult thread — connecting Thule and Vril (its ideological nursery), the Spear of Destiny legend, and the postwar lore that what the expeditions sought, Paperclip quietly inherited.